“The prize confirms that my research questions are valued by the community - and it strengthens my motivation to continue working on them,” says the award-winner. “It also increases my visibility as a young mathematician and, more importantly, brings more attention to the interdisciplinary field in which I have been working.”
Rajula Srivastava works at the interface between harmonic analysis and number theory. Harmonic analysis is originally concerned with the mathematical study of acoustic waves or, more generally, with the decomposition of functions into fundamental oscillations. Different musical instruments produce different sounds. A trumpet sounds completely different from a violin, even if both instruments play the same note. In a first approximation, it is the shape of the instrument that determines the sound it produces, i.e. a geometric property. Rajula Srivastava also deals with geometric properties in her research, namely the number of rational points that can be found near a given smooth surface of a manifold such as the sphere or a helix, using methods of harmonic analysis. How can one count the rational points in the vicinity of such a surface and what exactly does this measure tell us? Solutions to such counting problems yield important statements in number theory, for example in questions of Diophantine approximation in higher dimensions, i.e. the approximation of points with real coordinates by rational points.
Hirzebruch Research Instructor
Rajula Srivastava completed her Master of Science at the National Institute of Science Education and Research in India. The mathematician received her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2022. As a Hirzebruch Research Instructor, Rajula Srivastava is a scientist at both the Mathematical Institute of the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (MPIM) in Bonn. The Hirzebruch Research Instructor position is a three year appointment and was established in close partnership between the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics and the MPIM. It consists of two years of independent research at the MPIM and one academic year with a teaching obligation at the University of Bonn. The position is offered to particularly promising postdoctoral researchers.
Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize
The Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize is awarded to outstanding female mathematicians who have recently completed their doctorate. Rajula Srivastava has made progress in a challenging area at the interface between harmonic analysis and number theory. Rajula Srivastava receives 50,000 dollars. She would like to donate part of the prize money to organizations in India that support children's education. The prizewinner would like to thank her numerous mentors and the many female mathematicians at the University of Bonn who have inspired her as role models.